The Weekly Meat

Why I'm Backing Barack

By guest author Miriam Landman of M. Landman Communications and Consulting

I’ve been paying close attention to the presidential candidates’ campaigns in the news and on various websites for many months now, and I’ve concluded that Barack Obama is the best candidate to lead our country. The following are just a few of the factors that brought me to this conclusion:

1. HIS CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY, AND TONE: Everything I’ve learned about who Obama is and what he has done has convinced me that he is a principled and effective reformer who will challenge the status quo of corruption and gridlock in our government, and the apathy in our citizenry. His statements and goals for "change" go way beyond idealistic rhetoric. He strikes me as quite a serious and sincere person. He is thoughtful, straightforward, and clear about his positions. As just one key example, he has always taken a clear stand against the war in Iraq, a stand that showed good judgment and a willingness to risk his political career by speaking out about what was right. He has also championed ethics reform, and his legislative achievements demonstrate that he has been both progressive and pragmatic. As an environmentalist, I am also very impressed with his voting record on environmental issues.

Overall, the two Democratic candidates’ positions on major policy issues do not differ significantly. So it’s entirely fair to look at differences in their approach, their character, their tone. These things do matter. The tone of Obama’s remarks has been inclusive and even-tempered. He is not combative. He doesn’t want to engage in the petty game of tit-for-tat: the vicious cycle of offending and being offended that currently passes for political discourse. He doesn’t see issues in black and white; he recognizes the shades of complexity, and he understands that ends do not justify means. He is known for being a unifying and conciliatory force; he has a touch for eliciting cooperation and seeking common ground and consensus. It seems to me that these are some of the most important skills that a President can possibly have.

I would certainly like to see a woman serve as President of the United States, and there's no question that Hillary Clinton is knowledgeable, qualified, and politically connected, but those qualities alone do not make her the best candidate or the best leader for our country. With all due respect, there is a better candidate.

We don’t have to choose between style and substance. Obama has both. I'm not naively idealizing or romanticizing him. He, like any human being, has his flaws. We can’t expect anyone to be perfect. But I see him as a person of real integrity, a person who genuinely means what he says and who cares about people, more than he cares about having power.

2. HIS UNIQUE ABILITY TO CATALYZE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: Obama's poise and eloquence give him the rare ability to inspire, empower, and motivate masses of people. He’s not just a politician; he’s a born leader. His words have given large numbers of youth, minorities, and formerly apathetic or disenchanted citizens a reason to participate in the political process and vote for the first time (or the first time in a long time). He has re-energized and broadened the Democratic base, because he has refused to accept a narrow or cynical view of the electorate, and because his message resonates with all types of people. He's gaining an army of excited grassroots supporters who have finally found a politician they trust and admire.

Inspirational leadership is not something to belittle or ignore. Ridiculing Obama’s throngs of supporters as a “cult” of gullible followers is absurd and insulting. Those who know me can attest that I’m hardly someone who’s prone to hero worship or jumping onto bandwagons. And Obama’s endorsers include an impressive number of thoughtful and highly esteemed people (Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Bill Bradley, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Caroline Kennedy, to name only a few). Sure, some of his supporters act like fawning fans, and some of the slogans are cheesy, and some of the rallies sound more like (secular) church revivals than political events. But the Obama phenomenon is no cult or bandwagon. It’s a movement. It’s been so long since the country has seen this type of energy and optimism around political issues that some people seem to have forgotten what democratic involvement looks like. This is the way things should be. Getting more people to vote—and to care about politics, and the future, and their fellow humans—is good for our democracy and good for our country and world, not to mention a good way to win an election. Which brings me to...

3. ELECTABILITY: Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and Ari Fleischer are all hoping that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee; they (and many others) have publicly admitted that it would be hard for John McCain to beat Obama. Their assessment is supported by general election polls, which have shown that Obama is much more likely than Hillary Clinton to win in a race against McCain. In part, this is due to the Clintons’ baggage. A high level of Clinton fatigue and strong anti-Clinton sentiments still linger across America, sentiments which are likely to galvanize Republicans to come out to vote against Senator Clinton. (There were "Impeach Hillary" bumper stickers while she was still First Lady.) But the main thing that gives Obama the edge against McCain is that Obama appeals to many independent voters, “red state” Democrats, and even some disaffected Republicans, as well as progressive Democrats, while Clinton has very little support from these disparate groups. Obama has built a diverse and powerful coalition, and his base of support just continues to grow as more people get to know about him. McCain has some support from voters outside his party, but Obama has more. Non-Democrats see that he is not an ideologue, and they appreciate that he doesn’t vilify his opponents. They recognize that he listens to differing perspectives and is respectful.

I happen to be a 34-year-old, white, female, middle-class Democrat who grew up in Michigan, and who now lives in California. But my demographic profile doesn’t really matter. Obama is showing that he can appeal to people of all walks of life, in every demographic and in every region. The prevailing assumption that many whites would not vote for him has not proven true; he has won by wide margins in states where there are very few people of color.

It would be tragic for McCain to be elected as President, after all the damage that has been done domestically and internationally during these long, dark Bush years. Years ago, I thought McCain seemed fairly reasonable and decent, but he’s lost my trust. He thinks our troops should stay in Iraq indefinitely, and he has made thoroughly irresponsible, war-mongering statements about Iran. He has also called for overturning Roe v. Wade and he's helped nominate the right-wing Supreme Court Justices who could do just that if they get one more like-minded Justice to tip the scales. To me—and to the majority of Americans—these things are unacceptable.

::::::::

Obama’s remarkable journey from unknown long-shot to frontrunner has come about partly because of who he is, what he offers, and what the country needs at this point in history. It is also the result of a smart and well-run campaign that’s grounded in Obama’s community organizing experience, his top-notch team of advisors, and the bottom-up involvement and small donations from millions of supporters, which have allowed the campaign to remain free from a reliance on federal lobbyists’ contributions and the strings that are inevitably attached. The way Obama and his team have run his campaign bodes well for the way he (and his Cabinet) will lead our country.

The political mood of this country calls for a clean slate. Obama’s candidacy offers us the very rare opportunity to elect a principled leader who can help make our government more effective and respected, and who will represent the best ideals of our democracy. It is an opportunity that we must seize.

P.S. If you haven’t made up your mind about which candidate to support, I hope you will seek out more information about Senator Obama. I invite you to check out some of the articles and other links that I’ve posted on my site, or check out the Obama campaign site, which features substantive information, including: Issues, Fact Checks, and News.  -ML

Map graphic via Purple States.org, © 2008, Ed Mullen. As you can see, our electoral "red" and "blue" states don't look quite so starkly divided when the 2004 popular vote is accurately represented as appropriate blends of red and blue to produce more nuanced shades of purple.

One-Offs

You know how sometimes you have an original idea that seems impossibly brilliant — and then in retrospect it turns out to be admittedly brilliant, but completely unoriginal? And then other times the idea is in fact original, but is utter nonsense? Still other times, despite your best intentions, the idea is neither brilliant nor original.

Fifteen years ago I started referring to the occasional crazy folk as being "a few fries short of a Happy Meal." I was pretty sure I made up that expression. And then shortly thereafter, I come to hear a guy saying the same on the radio. Now, either I had a brilliant moment of anonymous lexical originality that the world picked up on, or — you know — I just never registered the saying, and co-opted it. We'll never know which.

All this to say that from time to time, we'll run a new feature here at The Weekly Meat — something I like to call stand-up philosophy.

Occasionally, I think in bumper-sticker aphorisms, and I'm not quite sure what to do with all of these seemingly pithy bits littering my notebooks except post them up here for widespread rumination, comment, lampooning, whatever.

Herewith, a few one-offs:

• Life is meat; TV is sausage.


• Power is a raw egg in the hand.


• Travel is an exercise in adaptation.


• If I am a part of all I've met, I must be getting bigger.


• Half of life is showing up — the other half is having the right tools.


• Getting old is falling asleep with your glasses on.


• Certainty: Eight people still always die in Hamlet.

And for you skiers out there, I've been wanting to make the following t-shirt for years:
POWDER TO THE PEOPLE!  NO JUSTICE, NO PISTE!

Now if you find any of this the least bit quotable, be sure to properly attribute. After all, I'd hate to find myself in ten years muttering and destitute, while passersby wag their heads disapprovingly and speak under their breath about Happy Meals.

Bob Dylan —  Tangled Up In Blue

Meat Addiction

I had no clue when I named this blog that folks might stumble their way onto these pages by googling "meat addict" and the like. Apparently, it's an increasingly popular thing to search for. Not as popular as "Scarlett Johanssen" perhaps, but let's not digress.

The name of this site, plus my post on (cheese) addiction, plus Google's proprietary algorithms place me fairly high on the list of results for that particular search. Now, don't get me wrong (especially you meat addicts out there — I appreciate the hits), but meat addiction? Who knew?

Yet, enough folks are afflicted by, or curious about, such a thing as to search the internets for it, and some of those folks are in turn curious enough or desperate enough to click on The Weekly Meat for answers. Well, I'm flattered — albeit naively curious — and hey, I'm here to serve my constituency (even those just passing through). So I've put forth some research to get to the bottom of this burgeoning phenomenon.

First off: Is there such a thing?

I realize addiction can be a tricky thing. Clearly, the most pandemic of addictions seems to be that of booze — something the human body does not historically/biologically need to survive. But meat? Homo sapiens have depended on it for eons. True, in our post-industrialized global reality, we can now get by swimmingly (if not happily) on a meat-free diet. Or to generalize, if you're reading these words, it's a fair bet that you do not need to kill wild game for the sake of sustenance. Not that there's anything wrong with it, mind you — I appreciate game as much as the next guy. I'm just saying it's no longer essential to our survival as a species.

Maybe it's more a problem of psychological dependency. If one works at it long enough, I suppose we can become addicted to nearly anything. Videogames, crosswords, blogging. Watching hockey fight videos on YouTube. Whatever.

And where might meat addiction rank in the world of addictions? Might it threaten the addict's well-being more seriously than, say, heroin? Dubious, but as with all addictions, it's a matter of degrees. I mean, is the afflicted in the habit of sneaking meat at work? Running late for appointments, furiously slugging down mouthwash to cover the smell of Slim Jims? Not-so-discreetly surfing barbecue porn sites behind the spouse's back? Cutting out of the office early to head over to the local butcher shop? Suffering meat blackouts? The mind reels with possibilities.

Maybe there's another angle I'm missing.

Ah. Further searching shows that some of this business about meat addiction is to do with Big Meat (that is, the Industry, à la "Big Tobacco"). And on that score — though we might differ a bit on some details — I'd agree that yes, certainly we do have a meat problem in this country.

Our problem is this: The meat that we most often consume does not come from healthy stock. Rather, it comes from animals who live nearly their entire brief existence while penned together like the shrink-wrapped food product they will become; hopped up on drugs and hormones to keep them from dying, because they're being fattened up on "food" they were not physiologically meant to eat and that they cannot digest without said drugs; all while wallowing in their own excrement. (For much more on this, I highly recommend reading Michael Pollan's excellent book The Omnivore's Dilemma; or more briefly, this Time article; or even the politically correct CDC website.)

So, we have a problem. But are we "addicts"? Whether or not we eat too much of it, or whether we have a compulsive need to eat it, I'll leave up to the evangelists out there — or better yet, to you. Rather, what I'd argue is that "meat addiction" may be missing the point. For we are in denial of an addiction to something much bigger: We are addicted to cheap goods, and it is this addiction that feeds our meat troubles.

We have convinced ourselves that it is our American birthright to pay next-to-nothing for nearly all goods and services. Thus, we turn our backs on the reality that behind our $5 t-shirts, 50¢/liter soda, and $2/pound meat is sweat-shop labor, high-fructose corn syrup, and "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations" (CAFOs).

And our $5 t-shirts, soda, and factory-farmed beef are slowly and methodically killing us as surely as heroin. The meat and soda are doing it medically, thanks to our country's #2 corn fetish (For an entertaining look at how and why, watch King Corn or Supersize Me or The Meatrix). Even the t-shirts are doing it culturally, (macro)economically, and spiritually.

Big Meat is a scourge, and it has been since the advent of, well, ice, which in combination with the railroads, allowed the shipping of meat. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle exposed horrifying slaughterhouse conditions over a hundred years ago, and effected fairly sweeping change, but not nearly enough. And the meat and farm lobbies have become exponentially stronger in recent years (amazing how the strength with which they argue is directly proportional to the damage they are causing), and once again, they are abetting the fouling of our food sources.

So, what to do? The answer, as with any addiction, is simple — if not easy. You want to start putting the Big Meat CAFOs out of business? Don't buy their products. Tell ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, et al. to go screw. Check out some of the great sustainability resources, find a local farm where they allow cows to eat the grass they were born to eat, join a meat CSA. The difference in taste and nutrition between CAFO and pastured beef is astounding.

"I would," you say, "I'd eat that way every day, but it's expensive."

And there's the rub. We are so far removed from our food sources that we have no appreciation for their true cost (neither monetarily; nor environmentally; nor ethically/morally). We spend far less on food than we used to. Further, our elected fat cats have so devalued both food and nutrition, that we don't seem to care to spend the money necessary to perhaps help us live longer. Instead, we subsidize the growth of more and more shit corn to feed our livestock. Crazy, when you consider how much we as a nation spend on the care of serious (and clearly related) health issues like diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, colon cancer, hip and knee replacements, etc.

Sure, the immediate situation is complicated too by the fact that our housing costs are so high (i.e., After rent/mortgage, who has money left over to eat well/righteously?). But housing costs have risen at a rate inversely proportional to food costs. Not directly, but the case could be made that we are willing to overpay for housing precisely because we underpay for food.

So where does all this leave us? I don't know, frankly. If I did, I like to think I'd have a more influential day job. But I do know this: I don't have to buy products that contain high-fructose corn syrup; I don't have to buy sick chicken eggs; I don't have to buy factory-farmed beef. I don't have to be an addict. I've got some say in this thing. And there's no need for me to start throwing meat on the fire of our national dependence. However much it might help bring traffic to this blog.

Feedlot photo via USDA. Turkeys photo by Scott Bauer, via the USDA.

Best. Concert. Ever.

The first concert I ever went to was to see The Kinks at the Philadelphia Spectrum, back in 1982. It was on their Give the People What They Want tour. Great show — but then again, I had little else to compare it to. It was undoubtedly an excellent show, but I've since seen others as good.

I think of myself as having very wide-ranging musical tastes, mostly rooted in alternative music (before "alternative" became mainstream fare), but with the exception of The Goats, this list of my top five shows seems incredibly mainstream. A longer list would require far too much rooting around my college-era memory cache — though offhand it would include folks like Superchunk, The Muffs, The Pogues, Billy Bragg, along with jazz cats Christian McBride and Brian Blade, Senegalese star Baaba Maal. I'd have to throw in a Dead Milkmen show. Maybe even Stevie Ray Vaughn a few weeks before he died. It'd start getting complicated.

That said, my top five, in sequential order only:

Bruce Springsteen — The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA — September 1984
This was on the Born in the USA tour. Granted, a hair past late-'70s vintage, but the E Street Band was arguably at the height of its polish, and it's a tough show to beat. He came onstage right on time, no opening act, and played four hours straight, no breaks.

U2 — The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA — April 1985
On the Unforgettable Fire tour. At some point, a fan tossed an Irish flag up on stage. Bono took it, he tore off the green section, ran to one side of the stage and threw it to the crowd. He then tore off the orange section, ran to the other side of the stage and threw it to the crowd. He was left with only the white section, which he held high and proclaimed to be the only flag that matters. Then, if memory serves, he blew his nose in it and sent that into the crowd as well. Bono had quite the mullet then, and his politics perhaps weren't quite as refined as they are now. In any case, excellent show. Again, I'd have loved to have seen them a few years before that, but I'm glad I got a chance to see them before their shows became bloated Rolling-Stones-like events.

Pearl Jam (w/Keith Richards) —  The Academy, NYC — December 31, 1992
This was a zeitgeist show. It was new year's eve, and my agent friend Ken scored us free tix. Pearl Jam opened this show for Keith Richards and the Inexpensive Winos, playing a tight hourlong set. Their first album was out, and the video for "Jeremy" had just blown up on MTV, so the audience was primed. We had actual seats upstairs, but as Pearl Jam came on, I handed my glasses, wallet, and flask (it was new year's, baby!) to my friends, and headed downstairs to the middle of the general admission mosh pit. It wasn't the Sex Pistols, or even Minor Threat, but I distinctly remember waking up the next morning and putting on my fairly new black Carolina steel toes. They were absolutely caked with the detritus of the pit: layers of sweat, beer, spit, snot, and blood.

The Goats — The Middle East, Cambridge, MA — September (?) 1993
One of the first shows I saw after I moved to Boston, and I went solo. Figures it would be a hometown Philly act. Another zeitgeist show. The Goats were an outstanding band that really captured the vibe of the early '90s. They were rappers with a punk rock aesthetic; a political conscience; incredibly dense, internally-rhymed lyrics; and great musical chops. The upstairs room at the Middle East is a weird space that was jammed with sweating fans. The energy was palpable and they did not disappoint. Years later, talking with Pierce and E.J. (guitar and bass, respectively), they told me they had always agreed that Middle East show was maybe The Goats' best ever.

Sonny Rollins — Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA — September 15, 2001
Again, this one had a lot to do with timing. When I bought the tickets to this show for AKL's birthday, I could not have known its significance. I'd seen Sonny once before (also an excellent show), but this was to be a tonic for both audience and performers alike. It was just four days after the 9/11 attacks. Sonny had been at his apartment a few blocks from ground zero when the towers came down, and this was his first gig since. He spoke very little, but played for well over three hours, and blew the horn like a man half his age. It was at once a funeral, a therapy session, and a giant and heartfelt "fuck you" to the terrorists, and it felt great. P.S. An abridged (and in fact, bootlegged) recording of this show was later released (and won a Grammy).

Lemme know your top 5 in the comments. Have a think while you're listening:

Bruce Springsteen — "Candy's Room"
U2 — "Gloria"
Pearl Jam — "Corduroy"
The Goats — "¿Do the Digs Dug?"
Sonny Rollins — "Why Was I Born?"